Ground Pounders is a turn-based, strategy wargame. Inspired by classic strategy games like Panzer General, and steeped in the lore of the Sword of the Stars universe, Ground Pounders offers a new generation of gamers an updated taste of turn-based strategic warfare.

Doporučeno těmito kurátory

30. března

With Summer still a ways off, we thought we'd take advantage of the retail tools Steam provides and for a 24 hour period offer up Ground Pounders and its Tarka DLC in a publisher flash sale. Tomorrow morning, 10AM PST, for 24 hours, the Ground Pounders products are on sale (except the HD map-pack - that's free, as always.)

Been curious about Ground Pounders? Why not check it out? Been thinking about picking up the DLC and playing as the Tarka? Tomorrow's your chance! Been a player for awhile and want to dominate your friends? Now you can - your treat!

Recenze

Informace o hře

Ground Pounders is a hex-based, turn-based strategy wargame. Inspired by classic strategy games like Panzer General, and steeped in the lore of the Sword of the Stars universe, Ground Pounders offers a new generation of gamers an updated taste of turn-based strategic warfare. Best of all, you can play it cross platform between desktop machine and mobile devices.

Ground Pounders lets players control an army from one of two factions. Each army is comprised of dozens of different unit types. You will lead your ground pounders across a variety of worlds, increase their experience levels and abilities over the course of two campaigns, and use them to unlock special action cards that can add special effects to single-player games, or to up the stakes in your cross-platform multi-player battles.

I have no idea how to win at this game and these are literally the only type of game I play. I want this game to be good because I enjoyed their previous title and it seemed like such a fun throwback to the SNES Super Conflict. that said a new player should not start off out-gunned and outmanuevered before they place their first piece. doesn't encourage people to give this game the time it should deserve.

TL;DR This the turn based strategy game gotham deserves, not the turn based strategy gotham needs.

Just going to start out by saying that, from my experience, this is not a normal hex-based strategy game. If you are looking for something resembling, say, Advance Wars or Civ, then this game is not for you. If you are looking for something consistent and easy in which you can figure out the rules in ten minutes and breeze through the rest of the game, then you should spam the back button until you reach something completely different. This game has a lot of less-than-obvious mechanics and an absurdly steep learning curve for at least the first few hours (or, dare I say it, days) of play, and to top it off, the tutorial is honestly not that great. You will spend your first few sessions replaying the same mission over and over again, quite possibly screaming, trying to figure out how your main battle tanks were destroyed by a company of infantry at what the computer claimed were 10-1 odds in your favor, and then you will move on to the second mission and try to figure out how you're supposed to beat an enemy with about 3 or 4 times as many troops as you, but I will tell you that it is possible.

Once you get past the complete insanity of trying to figure out how this game works, you will actually (miraculously) discover an amazingly intricate, engaging, and still almost stupidly hard strategy game, because you will be going up with 6 squads against 18 squads of tanks, but if you literally play your cards right, deploy your forces well, and have just a bit of luck, you will find that there are subtle patterns and rules that you can use to hold the line and push the enemy back. The dice system adds a pleasant element of chance which you can and must use to think about where you'll need power which interacts well (if peculiarly and not necessarily nicely) with the defensive support mechanic and the different unit types in order to force you to think about what you're doing on the battlefield.

Again, if I didn't say it strongly enough in the first paragraph, if you are looking for an easy, simple, lazy, or idle game which you can pick up on Friday afternoon and master by lunch on Saturday, you would be better off dropping your money on the sidewalk in the rain, because this isn't that type of game. It's hard to learn and harder to "master," and if you're not interested in committing a lot of time to learn a game then you will not enjoy yourself. If, however, you are a slightly obsessive person who likes challenges and is interested in analyzing systems, then I can say that I've never encountered a better game for it and that you might be worse off donating your money to a charity.

Update:This game must not be doing well: 8 weeks after launching on steam it was in an 80% off sale on an internet store; 9 weeks after launch it was in a cheap game bundle. I would guess that we are not going to see long-term support with this game, since it looks like it sold badly.

Updated review because of game leaving Early Access:Everything in the review is still relevant. Only change is increased thread locking and post deleting in the forums. Here's a post I made about the Early Access price supposed to be lower than the release price before my reply was deleted and the thread locked:

I have been holding off writing this review because the game could be so good and I was hoping it would change.

This is a hex-based wargame in the SotS universe and that's exciting stuff. (I just realized that will sound like a joke to non-wargame fans, but it's true).

Based on the screenshots you would think was a cool, deep, fun game. The information in the encyclopedia in game is a nice touch.

Try to play the game though and you'll find a confusing, fiddly mess. There are far too many phases and lots of fiddly things you have to keep doing. The user interface is really bad both in usability and in showing you what's going on. A lot of this is because of the developers making the bad decision to have a "unified user interface" on mobile and PC, which means no tooltips, only one button used and no scrolling when you get your mouse to the edge of the screen. This cripples the PC UI and the developers flat-out refuse to change it to make the PC version easier to use.

The tutorial has been through a few changes but still remains awful at teaching you the game. This is both due to the content of the tutorial and the way it is presented, which makes it hard to tie together the UI with what the flash-card like windows are telling you.

I bought the game at the start of the Early Access on Steam and I was disappointed to find out that the game was not as finished as I thought it would be. From the store page it seemed like the only thing missing were some campaign missions, and the ironing out of the last few bugs:

"With this Early Access release, Ground Pounders is feature complete, and the main differences between now and final release - besides a few last minute cards and units - is there is only 1 campaign (instead of 2) and 5 scenarios (instead of ten)."

It turned out that early adopters really were unpaid beta testers and only by assiduously playing when it wasn't fun and giving feedback could we turn the game into the good game it had the potential to be. I mean, it wasn't just bug fixing, there were actually changes to how the game worked, and there was really the feeling that the game hadn't been tested at all before putting it on steam.

I did this for a short while but then I just couldn't be bothered any more- it was just not fun. I decided to put the game down until they finished it and see how it was. As of today the game is still in Early Access but is 66% off on a certain online game store. Because the Steam store page went out of its way to point out that we were saving money by buying into the Early Access game at the start vs. buying when it launched I felt a bit betrayed by this; I also took it as a sign that the studio may be in some sort of trouble. The game was planned to be released in March according to the Steam store page and it's almost June now with no release so maybe that's why.

Anyway, I suppose if you do get a deep discount on this or even get it in a bundle (there have been a lot of Early Access games in bundles recently) then it may turn out to be the game you expect, but at the moment it's unlikely that it is.

edited to say something positive: The music is good. That's the only thing to like about it though really.

This game was in rough shape during EA, but they somehow managed to push it over the top by release. So the most recent reviews are going to be much more accurate. I don't care about SOTS lore, and you probably don't either. But if you are looking for a tactical challenge - Panzer Corps x 5 - then this might meet your expectations. I actually quit during EA, as the AI was too tough for me (not saying much), but I think they've adjusted it so you can have some fun and learn the game on "easy."

If you like games where you are presented with a variety of possible tactical solutions - due to the subtlety and number of different units and their characteristics - you will be challenged. Also, it's not just "bam, you're dead." Even with the odds clearly in your favor, battles are rarely one-off affairs. The game and AI make good use of concentration of force, flanking and the battle cards (consider them off board support). In most games, you're only able to use two or three, so they don't intrude or overpower an engagement.

The "skirmishes" are actually just scenarios, but there's plenty of content, along with the campaigns, where your units gain experience, etc. Because of a shaky start in terms of the interface and tutorials, the game got underrated pretty quick. But the most complicated moves, that of using your transports and air units, are pretty easy to understand now. But you'll probably need to play the "air" power tutorial at least once.

Anyway, it's worth what they're asking, and doubly so if and when it goes on sale come Christmas 2014.

Deep and detailed turn based strategy set in the Sword of the Stars universe. Interesting mix of hard strategic choices and a deck building system that allows you to customize what kind of temporary bonuses to apply to the battlefield (remote resupply, orbital bombardment, etc.). Dice system is innovative and allows you to tailor a normally 'random roll' to where you think the most critical unit on the battlefield is. Good musical score. Campaign is challenging and diverse but rewarding. Racial differences in unit types make battlefield choices interesting (burrowing Hiver tanks coming up behind your main line, etc.).